Venezuela seeks to curb Guyana’s claim at the ICJ for a disputed territory

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Government of Venezuela seeks to stop the “unilateral” demand of Guyana related to the dispute over the Essequibo area, by presenting its preliminary objections before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Foreign Ministry reported in a statement released this Thursday.

The State portfolio affirmed that the objective of the preliminary objection is “to defend the rights and interests of the Republic” and to ensure “that this demand is not admitted due to the lack of essential elements to form a due process.”

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In March 2018, Guyana filed a lawsuit against Venezuela before the judge in The Hague to resolve the territorial dispute between the two States over the Essequibo region.

Four years later, in March 2022, the Guyanese government presented before the ICJ – a court that in December 2020 declared itself competent to decide on said dispute – its arguments to validate the 1899 arbitration award, which concluded with a sentence that granted the territory to what was then British Guiana, a decision that Caracas does not recognize.

Venezuela claims about 70% of Guyana’s territory, the Essequibo region, including offshore oil reserves, arguing that the 1899 agreement is null and void because it “fraudulently affected 159,500 square kilometers of territory” of the Guayana Esequiba, as the Chavista government calls it.

In the statement, the Foreign Ministry recalled that “Venezuela’s position has been, and will continue to be, its inescapable adherence to the 1966 Geneva Agreement”, and rejects the “instrumentalization” of the ICJ to settle a dispute that demands a negotiated solution, with “due respect to this instance as the main judicial organ of the United Nations.”

The Government maintained that “the ‘validity of the 1899 arbitration award'” had been “an issue that had been overcome and that it was artificially proposed in Guyana’s unilateral demand to seek to get rid of its commitment to negotiate, to which it is bound under the Geneva Agreement.”

Venezuela hopes that the matter “immediately returns to the field of friendly negotiation” between the parties and to the “correct application” of the Geneva Agreement to settle the territorial dispute.